Archive

Last March, when Cathy and Mike Naro were here from Chicago, Mike and I took a stroll around Granada while Cathy and Maureen worked in the studio. I wanted Mike Naro to see the extraordinary work of Raul Ruiz, the Granada grafitti artist. I made a few pictures of the street murals we visited and published them here on Maureen’s Printmaking Courses in Spain blog. Mike, who was a bit skeptical about walking out of our way to see street art, said, “This isn’t grafitti; it’s art!”

The other day I ran across this video of Raul creating one of his mural-sized portraits in a live performance in the Centro de Lenguas Modernas of the University of Granada on the occasion of the closure of their 2011-2012 academic year.

Barbara Milman, an ex president of the California Society of Printmakers was here recently making solarplate prints with Maureen in the studio. When she got back home she published this report on the society’s newsletter. Thank you Barbara, for the plug! Here’s the link: http://caprintmakers.wordpress.com/

Granada, April 29, 2011–It’s 9:00 a.m. and we’ve just finished signing the last of her prints. She and I are both delighted with what she’s achieved over the past week. Barbara, a longtime resident of the San Francisco area–and ex-president of the California Society of Printmakers–had never done any solar-plate printmaking before, but it didn’t take her long to see the light.

An exceptionally focused artist–“I came here to make prints, not to do tourism.”–Barbara dedicated the first couple of days to mastering the basics. Then on the third day she produced an exceptionally lovely solar print, then another, then a whole series of them.

We’re going to miss her as, besides being a fine artist, she’s good people with interesting ideas and charming conversation. I’m including here an album of photographs which Mike made during Barbara’s stay in the Gallinero.

Our old friend, Barbara Mason (from the Atelier Meridian in Portland, Oregon), was kind enough last summer to recommend my etching workshop to a friend called Mary Marjerrison. Mary showed up a couple of weeks ago with her friend, the author, Nancy Tomasetti, the Gallinero’s first writer. Did they come from Oregon? No, they came from Milan, Italy, where they both live. It’s a small world. Hence the silly title of this post.

Mary, who works in administration at an international school in Milan was able to rob a week for printmaking thanks to the very civilized Italian tradition of the “Settimana bianca,” a week off school in March. Perhaps it’s because she was previously an art teacher, or because of her high energy level (How many grandmothers do you know who run marathons?), but Mary got straight down to work, preparing her solar-print acetates in the Gallinero in the evenings and showing up each morning prepared to burn the images onto plates.

Perhaps her efficiency in the studio also had to do with the fact that she didn’t have a lot of experience with solar plates and was eager to learn. It’s often more difficult to work with people who already know a lot about the subject. Maybe that’s why the Chinese say, “Before you can fill a glass it must be empty.” I think she made more successful prints in one week with me than most artists make in two. Even so, Mary insists that she didn’t have enough time and that she needs to come back and do some more work as soon as possible. That’s excellent news.

While Mary and Maureen were in the studio all morning every
morning, Nancy stayed ensconced in the Gallinero with her feet up by the fire and her laptop on–you guessed it–her lap. The first thing they did when they arrived was to reorganize the furniture in the kitchen, relegating the little Spanish-style kitchen table with the brasero (brazier) under it to a rear corner, dragging the old coffee table out of the pantry and swiveling the sofa around so it faced the wood stove. (It worked well; we left it that way.)

Nancy is from New York but studied in Wisconsin. She still has a house on the shores of Lake Michigan, and goes back there ever summer to spend time with old friends and family.

Besides working on her latest short story, Nancy, who had never visited the Alhambra, took a morning off work to see Granada’s–and one of Europe’s–prime tourist attractions, and one of the few which actually lives up to its advanced billing.

In all, I couldn’t have hoped for a more rewarding visit from these two Milanese-American artists. I hope they do make it back sometime.

El Gallinero Receives Its First Artists, Makes for a Busy Springtime in 2010

It’s been a busy month and a half in my studio, working with artists from both sides of the Atlantic. All of them stayed in our new Gallinero (“Chicken House”) artists’ residence and have confirmed our highest hopes for that
studio/cabin as a place which genuinely inspires creative work.

Isabel Fallow
The first one to visit was Isabel Fallow, accompanied by her husband, Jack, a professional communicator and mediator (in the peacemaking sense of the word) who dedicated his time to reading and relaxing and sorting out the world with my husband Mike while Isabel and I worked together in the studio.

Isabel, like all the others in this post, found my studio on Internet (I’m not sure where as Mike has put me all over the place…) She’s a professional painter and printmaker from Buckinghamshire in the U.K. Her work is bold with a distinctive personal touch, and her drawings lent themselves nicely to the creation of solar-plate prints. She was delighted with the results and is already talking about coming back for more, perhaps with a few artist friends.

Beatriz Taillefer & Eduardo
Beatriz and Eduardo are, respectively, an established painter and a professional photographer from Málaga on the southern Mediterranean coast of Spain. Both were fascinated with the solar-plate techniques, and anxious to apply them to their work, each in their own way. Beatriz, who is doing a lot of portrait commissions lately, was anxious to change techniques for a while, so she spent some time working on her favorite subject, flowers, which she does beautifully.

Eduardo’s prints, based on his photographs expertly manipulated in PhotoShop, surprised me with their artful qualities. Who said you can’t make real art with a computer? Artistic creation aside, Beatriz and Eduardo discovered that the bar next door served free tapas with the drinks and became loyal regulars there evenings.

Janet Stahle-Fraser
Janet arrived in early June, along with her husband, Dave, from their cabin “in the bush” somewhere north of Toronto. In the two weeks she spent in my studio Janet touched some of the most interesting techniques: solar plate, carborundum, liquid metal, chine collé and experimental printing. She was delighted to go home with a big bundle of plates and prints under her arm, which she will be showing this summer in her Tapawingo Studio in Baysville, Ontario.

Dave, whom Mike refers to as his “Canadian expert,” got stuck into what was supposed to be a minor building project with Mike but wound up as two days of hard-rock mining, as the walls of our house are of stone almost two feet thick!
The final result was the hanging of this antique plant hanger which they found in a second-hand lot for 10 euros, thinking it was “a bargain.”

Note: There are still some available spaces in my calendar of summer workshops, both for the courses and the Gallinero. But you need to write me soon, or phone (+34 658 953399) before they are spoken for.

A “Gallinero” in Spanish is a Chicken Coop

We called our new artists’ and writers’ residence “El Gallinero” because it’s located where our chicken house used to be. Sometime after the chickens had an unfortunate encounter with a weazel, we built my first painting studio there in the mid-70’s. When I got my new etching and painting studio 10 years later, the old one was relegated to storeroom status, and deteriorated over the years.

For a long time I’ve needed a place to accommodate the artists who come for my summer etching workshops and those who come to do collaborative work during the rest of the year. Then last fall we decided to get started on it. The plans were a bit vague: re-roof and restore the original studio, add a kitchen/living area in the available space behind it, and a little terrace with a view off the kitchen.

“Why Does This Casita Have to be Limited to Artists?”

Luckily our village builders are tolerant and creative, and they signed on for the project. Little by little the new artists’ residence began to take shape. We were delighted with the results, achieved in spite of five straight weeks of record monsoon winds and rains during the building work. At one point someone said, “Why does this casita have to be limited to artists? Wouldn’t writers appreciate it’s spaciousness, tastefulness and tranquil setting, too?” That’s how the Gallinero became an “artists’ and writers’ refuge.”

We’re Open for Business

We have now begun to accept reservations. Please take a look at the information and photographs in the pages of this site and see if you don’t think a shorter or longer stay in the Gallinero might not get your creative juices flowing. Of course, the appeal of this residence is not limited just to its own spaces and installations. It’s located in Spain, at the edge of a village nine kilometers (an easy 15-minutes) from the historical Andalusian city of Granada with both the Sierra Nevada ski resort and the Mediterranean shore within a 45-minute drive. If you haven’t been to Granada yet, it’s about time. If you’ve been here already, you know why you’ve been yearning to come back.